Nerves and Common Sense eBook

This is the fact that we want to understand thoroughly
and to look out for. If we are impressed with
the idea that any one food does not agree with us,
whenever we think of that food we contract, and especially
our stomachs contract. Now if our stomachs contract
when a food that we believe to disagree with us is
merely mentioned, of course they would contract all
the more when we ate it. Naturally our digestive
organs would be handicapped by the contraction which
came from our attitude of mind and, of course, the
food would appear not to agree with us.

Take, for instance, people who are born with peculiar
prenatal impressions about their food. A woman
whom I have in mind could not take milk nor cream
nor butter nor anything with milk or cream or butter
in it. She seemed really proud of her milk-and-cream
antipathy. She would air it upon all occasions,
when she could do so without being positively discourteous,
and often she came very near the edge of discourtesy.
I never saw her even appear to make an effort to overcome
it, and it is perfectly true that a prenatal impression
like that can be overcome as entirely, as can a personally
acquired impression, although it may take a longer
time and a more persistent effort.

This anti-milk-and-cream lady was at work every day
over-emphasizing her milk-and-cream contractions;
whereas if she had put the same force into dropping
the milk-and-cream contraction she would have been
using her will to great advantage, and would have helped
herself in many other ways as well as in gaining the
ability to take normally a very healthful food.
We cannot hold one contraction without having its
influence draw us into many others. We cannot
give our attention to dropping one contraction without
having the influence of that one effort expand us
in many other ways. Watch people when they refuse
food that is passed them at table; you can see whether
they refuse and at the same time contract against the
food, or whether they refuse with no contraction at
all. I have seen an expression of mild loathing
on some women’s faces when food was passed which
“did not agree with them,” but they were
quite unconscious that their expressions had betrayed
them.

Now, it is another fact that the contraction of the
stomach at one form of food will interfere with the
good digestion of another form. When cauliflower
has been passed to us and we contract against it how
can we expect our stomachs to recover from that contraction
in time to digest perfectly the next vegetable which
is passed and which we may like very much? It
may be said that we expand to the vegetable we like,
and that immediately counteracts the former contraction
to the vegetable which we do not like. That is
true only to a certain extent, for the tendency to
cauliflower contraction is there in the back of our
brains influencing our stomachs all the time, until
we have actually used our wills consciously to drop
it.